american flag, 2021
American Flag 1–3 is a sterile installation of three pedestals mounted with archival paper. Above each plinth, ink slowly drips from IVs. Over time, this performance reveals an abstracted image as red ink pools and cascades into blue puddles. Negative space completes the configuration, an inky rendering of the American flag. Jasper Johns’ seminal flag paintings, in particular Three Flags (1958), served as great inspiration to Wagenknecht during this period of study. Nested inside one another, Johns’ composition highlights the structure of the flag as an object as well as a national emblem. Wagenknecht echoes this approach by favouring process over end result, refiguring America drop by drop.